CHINESE DIRECTOR ZHANG YIMOU, PRESIDENT OF JURY IN “BEIJING FICTS FESTIVAL” SET FOR WESTERN PRODUCTION

Chinese director Zhang Yimou set for first western production. The President of International Jury in the “Beijing Worldwide Final of Championship of Cinema and Sport Television” organized by FICTS in Beijing, is in talks to direct “The Parsifal Mosaic”, an adaptation of a Robert Ludlum novel. The film will be produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, the director of “Rush” and “Frost/Nixon”.

Zhang Yimou the director of “Hero”, “House of Flying Daggers” and “ The Red Lantern” should direct his first western production. He made his name in the west with his martial arts epics that blended dizzying, dreamlike fight sequences with vivid photography and big emotion. 2002’s Hero debuted at number one in the US box office charts and became the fourth most successful foreign language film in the country, while he used a western actor in Christian Bale for his 2011 film The Flowers of War. He also directed the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

Protagonist of the novel is Michael Havelock and the story is of a US intelligence officer who sees his lover, a double agent working for the KGB, killed by his own agency. He later sees her alive at a train station, and goes searching for her, becoming embroiled in a deep conspiracy.